"Bitcoin consumes more energy than [insert country here]", "Bitcoin is DESTROYING the planet", "Bitcoin could cost us our green future" A deeper look into bullshit.
As you might have noticed there has been an explosion of mainstream media article about Bitcoin's energy consumption. I won't link these crap but here are the titles:
The guardian: "Bitcoin mining consumes more electricity a year than Ireland "
Express.co.uk "SHOCK CLAIM: Bitcoin is DESTROYING the planet and uses as much energy as DENMARK"
Vice: "Bitcoin Could Consume as Much Electricity as Denmark by 2020"
Mashable: "How to fix Bitcoin's energy-consumption problem"
CBS News:"Bitcoin mining consumes more energy than 159 countries"
Newscientist : "Bitcoin mining uses more energy than Ecuador – but there’s a fix"
CNN: "Bitcoin boom may be a disaster for the environment"
Bloomberg: "Bitcoin's Exorbitant Energy Costs May Prove to Be Biggest Risk"
The list goes on...
So what is the info? Where does it come from? How did they come up with it? Is it true? What is the info Wrapped in sensationalism, the info is the following:
energy consumption of the bitcoin network, which is responsible for verifying transactions made with the cryptocurrency, is 30.14TWh a year
Where does it come from Following direct links, or going through endless source circle of newspaper quoting one another, the source for absolutely all of these news article is the following website: https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption The about section contains the following:
Digiconomist is a platform that provides in-depth analysis, opinions and discussions with regard to Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. The goal of Digiconomist is to cover any relevant financial, economic or regulatory cryptocurrency-related topic.
Additionally a quick look at the website shows a few things: 1. The website only talks about ETH and BTC 2. Outside of the blog posts it almost only talks about energy consumption (there is an ETH obituaries) 3. Blog posts started in march 2014 4. The domain was registered the 2014-07-03 5. No address, no country, no name, no foundation, no agency... Who are they? Disregarding the fact that it comes from a no name website the, info is right there with a nice graph and even a methodology explained with a pretty infochart. It almost looks to good for a blog about cryptos. How did the Bloomberg, ars technica and the like found this website? I do not know, but when they did a ready to use report for newspaper was there waiting for them. Also, the graph as an url embedded at the bottom: "bitcoinenergyconsumption.com" which interestingly enough is a redirect for Digiconomist. Also the bottom of the page on consumption has a list of news articles referring to this website for their sensationalist claims. How did they come up with it So as I said the methodology is there, and the result of it is there too:
Bitcoin's current estimated annual electricity consumption* (TWh) 32.53
So let's dive into the methodology on a step by step process, first of all, a further detailed methodology is shown here
First, calculate the "Annualized global mining revenues (USD)", the website says: $13,487,831,695 As of this writing, on fork.lol, the reward for BTC is around r = 240 000 USD per block. r * 6 * 24 * 365 = 12 614 400 000. This is the same order of magnitude, but not good enough. Including the BCH reward as well (17 639 as we speak) gives : C = 13 541 505 840 USD. Seems about right.
Calculate the mining operating cost "Annualized estimated global mining costs" : $1,626,480,051 This is easy, it is simply 60% of the previous number C * 0.6 = 8 124 903 504 USD ??? Ok this is weird, their number is not even 60%, it is more like 12%. So where is that number coming from?? Turns out this 60% assumption is not used at all in the calculation...
Disregard the previous step
Calculate the current total hashrate on the network: 14.12 ExaHashes/s at the time of these lines
Assume the following:
Since the marginal product of mining is equal to the number of Bitcoins received per unit of mining effort, it would thus be expected that miners will either add more hashrate if the resulting revenue exceeds associated electricity costs, or reduce the hashrate once electricity costs start exceeding the revenue per hash. This also means that it is expected that the total network of Bitcoin miners is always mining at the calculate-able break-even efficiency. The break-even efficiency for Bitcoin mining can simply be calculated as: W per GH/s=(price∙BTC/day)/(price per kWh ∙ 24hrday)
In layman terms, this means that they assume that the number of miners is always the exact amount for break even. This is a fair assumption. The formula that follows it make no sense without the context it came with in that working paper. A quick look at this document shows concerning mathematical mistakes... I have tried for far too long, I cannot reproduce any of their numbers... So is it true? No These numbers are not reproducible, they make no sense and calculated using a dubious paper by some professor of "social research". I assume he is also the owner of the website because his name appears way too often in there...The university where he studies has a nice wikipedia page:
The New School is a private non-profit research university centered in Manhattan, New York City, USA, located mostly in Greenwich Village. It was founded in 1919 as an institution dedicated to academic freedom and intellectual inquiry, serving as a home for progressive thinkers.
The real estimation This is actually pretty straight forward. The maximum ever reached in hash rate was 16.5 exahashes/s according to fork.lol. This is equivalent to 1.18 million S9 ant miner at 14 TH/s. Assuming everyone suck and they all have old hardware with crappy PSU. Let's say each S9 consumes 2000W. This is a 17520000 Wh per year per miner, which yields 20.67 TWh. So peak production with very negatives assumptions yields a number 40% lower... General critic Deriving consumption from the mining revenue is purely ludicrous. No including the fees in the mining revenue calculation is also ludicrous. If your numbers are not reproducible, they are worthless.
BAT Community Weekly Update: 02/22/2018 to 03/01/2018 — Twitch support released + $1M added to referral promo, Let's Encrypt official sponsorship, Brave commercial spotted, FindX partnership and knowledge bombs!
Welcome to this week's community update! Some major releases this week such as Twitch support for Brave and Brave Payments with BAT. The verified publisher family is growing fast, and we're happy to expand this circle to Twitch. More platforms coming too! So without further ado and with special thanks to MurphD:
Brave Announces Twitch Support! Today we’re announcing that Twitch streamers can earn revenue in connection with the Brave browser. As part of our commitment to Twitch, we have added up to an additional $1 million to our referral program for creators. https://brave.com/blog/twitch-support/
Brave Sponsors Let’s Encrypt Today Brave is proud to announce its corporate sponsorship of Let’s Encrypt, a free, automated, and open certificate authority (CA). Let’s Encrypt is a service provided by the Internet Security Research Group (ISRG) and is run for the public’s benefit. It gives domain name owners the trusted digital certificates they need to create more secure and privacy-respecting websites – at zero cost. https://brave.com/blog/lets-encrypt-sponsorship/
Basic Attention Token article now published on Wikipedia Users can now find information about Basic Attention Token on Wikipedia. Thanks to @Miyayesereum for writing the first versions of the Wikipedia article. Nicely written! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_Attention_Token
Release Brave Releases Desktop Client Version v0.21.18 Added the ability to pay Twitch publishers with BAT. (#13139) There are three things related to Twitch that will be fixed or improved later: i) Paused videos are currently counted for watch time, ii) favicons associated with streams are not shown in the payments panel when watching live video iii) calculating watch time will be improved when seeking. Added the ability to sort publishers using the verified publisher column under payments. (#10752) Moved publishers that have been deleted from payments into a new dialog. (#12833) Fixed localization issue when backing up recovery key. (#13311) Fixed favicons not being consistently displayed under payments. (#13281) Fixed publisher pinning issue when brave profile has been corrupted. (#13134) Fixed the actions column under payments being clickable as it's not sortable. (#13074) Fixed token promotions notifying users who have disabled promotion notifications in the advanced settings. (#13021) Fixed "show notifications" under advanced settings being re-enabled when disabling/enabling payments. (#12817) Fixed publishers being auto included under payments even though "show only included sites" has been disabled. (#12766) Fixed incorrect decimal value being displayed when balance under payments is below a certain amount. (#12666) Fixed pinned publishers not always being displayed under payments. (#12584) Fixed "never include" wording under context menu when right clicking on publishers under payments. (#12296) Fixed incorrect amount being deducted from wallet during payment processing. (#12183) Fixed manually entered values for publishers under payments not being retained. (#11238) https://github.com/brave/browser-laptop/releases/tag/v0.21.18dev
BAT/Brave in the News
Twitch game streamers now can tap in to Brave browser payments The ad-blocking browser adds a third category of online creators who can get paid by Brave users -- and a third $1 million giveaway. https://www.cnet.com/news/twitch-videogame-streamers-can-tap-into-brave-browser-payments/ Basic Attention Token Launches Support for Twitch Publishers, Adds $1M to Referral Program Allowing Twitch creators to become Brave Publishers is part of the team’s ongoing campaign to restructure the current system of digital advertising, which requires growing the platform’s user base. “Supporting Twitch streamers is part of our mission to reset browsing by giving a better experience to users and content creators,” said BAT CEO and founder, Brendan Eich, in a statement to Coinsquare Discover. “Users love to give to gamers they follow and now Brave lets fans directly support their favorite Twitch streamers.” https://discover.coinsquare.io/digital-currency/basic-attention-token-twitch-referral-program/ Is this web browser the answer to YouTube’s new monetization policy? YouTube users who want to get paid are beginning to turn toward a new web browser that makes use of cryptocurrency and could allow content creators to get around the social media platform’s evolving payment system. As reported by Polygon, YouTubers are beginning to flock to Brave, an open-source browser that blocks ads and allows users to decide for themselves who gets paid what. https://www.dailydot.com/upstream/brave-browser-youtube/?tw=dd What’s Brave, YouTubers’ new favorite browser? It’s a scary time for YouTubers: YouTube’s community guidelines are changing seemingly on the fly, demonetization is affecting a large number of creators and the future of the platform that many people call home is uncertain. Creators don’t want to leave YouTube, but they are trying to figure out what’s next. Maybe the answer isn’t finding a new home, but a new browser. https://www.polygon.com/2018/2/22/17040522/brave-browser-cryptocurrency-youtube-demonetizationye Basic Attention Token (BAT) - Fundamental Analysis by Nugget’s News Australia Review & analysis of the Brave browser and the Basic Attention Token. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afOlkrKWZMg Study Breaks: How Blockchain Technology will Shape Our Future The rising tech made popular by Bitcoin has applications extending far beyond banking and finance. Mentions Basic Attention Token. https://studybreaks.com/culture/blockchain/ Why futurist Mark Pesce wants you to buy 15 minutes of his time on the blockchain Pesce says the idea came to him after Mark Jeffery, an author and close friend of Pesce’s, made a tongue-in-cheek tweet in August last year, which read: “By the year 2018, 4 out of 5 Americans had their own personal cryptocurrency”. He was also in part inspired by Mozilla founder Brendan Eich’s Basic Attention Token, which is designed to “unfuck” (his words) internet advertising through rewarding both users and publishers with tokens by ditching all the complex audience segmentation and cross device tracking involved in modern-day advertising and valuing an audience’s attention equally. https://www.smartcompany.com.au/startupsmart/news-analysis/why-futurist-mark-pesce-wants-to-let-you-buy-15-minutes-of-his-time-on-the-blockchain/ Brave mentioned in new piece by founder of MyEtherWallet According to the founder of MyEtherWallet, Taylor M., the future of Ethereum doesn’t involve wallets. Brave is mentioned along with several other technologies as presenting a possible key to this future. https://medium.com/mycrypto/the-future-of-ethereum-doesnt-have-wallets-232fcee708bf
News You Should Know:
AT&T And Bayer Bet On Blockchain To Tame Digital Advertising https://adexchanger.com/online-advertising/att-bayer-bet-blockchain-tame-digital-advertising/ Dear ad industry: You should care about media literacy, too I have an odd proposal for the ad industry: One of our most potent weapons in the war for human attention is the media-literate consumer, and we should work to cultivate more of them. I’m talking about the consumer who can tell when an ad is an ad, when a news story is sensationalized with partisanship or outright faked, and when a publisher cares more about clicks than quality. These are the consumers who, when they see a cluttered ad experience, know that their attention isn’t being properly valued and promptly install an ad blocker. These shouldn’t be the consumers who scare us; they should be our allies, and we need more consumers to be like them. https://medium.com/media-future/dear-ad-industry-you-should-care-about-media-literacy-too-4acdb914dde9 Note: These three stories below relate to cryptocurrency mining and Coinhive, which as appeared on several sites. Brave already protects against this, but we could use the stories to show how common this is becoming. LA Times serving cryptocurrency mining script The Los Angeles Times website is serving a cryptocurrency mining script which appears to have been placed there by malicious attackers, according to a well-known security expert. British infosec researcher Kevin Beaumont, who has warned that Amazon AWS servers could be held to ransom due to lax security, tweeted that the newspaper's site was serving a script created by Coinhive. https://www.itwire.com/security/81860-la-times-serving-cryptocurrency-mining-script.html Showtime websites secretly mined user CPU for cryptocurrency This past weekend, Showtime websites were found to be running a script that allows the sites to mine visitors’ extra CPU power for cryptocurrency, as pointed out by users on Twitter. The afflicted sites included showtime.com and showtimeanytime.com, but the script has since been removed following reports from Gizmodo and other sites. https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/26/16367620/showtime-cpu-cryptocurrency-monero-coinhive Hackers Hijacking CPUs to Mine Cryptocurrency Have Now Invaded YouTube Ads The latest network to be targeted by cryptojackers is Google’s advertising service on YouTube. As Ars Technica first reported on Friday, users on social media started complaining earlier this week that YouTube ads were triggering their anti-virus software. Specifically, the software was recognizing a script from a service called CoinHive. https://gizmodo.com/hackers-hijacking-cpus-to-mine-cryptocurrency-have-now-1822466650
Brave Team Tweets:
BrendanEich @BrendanEich “Fraud is good.” - AdTechGordonGecko. Yet another reason to block by default. @brave 7:06 PM - Feb 28, 2018
BrendanEich @BrendanEich We have Flash off by default (if you enable, you have to approve for each site and it auto-disables for that site in seven days) and no other plugins. Brave forthcoming release will quarantine downloads on macOS. Brave on Windows already quarantines: pic.twitter.com/JBbdrwdZvu 12:38 PM - Feb 26, 2018
Roaring Fans on Twitter:
VintageVolatility @thetrading Highly recommend the Brave browser. Just look at what it did to the @DailyCaller site. 21 ads and trackers blocked and 28 https upgrades. The beauty is they get paid through @brave without me having to withstanding this sort of onslaught. 6:15 PM - Feb 22, 2018
Let's Encrypt @letsencrypt Thank you to @brave for supporting an even more secure Web through their sponsorship of Let's Encrypt! We look forward to continuing to create a better Web alongside you. 12:20 PM - Feb 27, 2018
I have been closely watching the mining scene for only about 3 months, so excuse me if this sort of question is asked frequently, or is too speculative. Is all BTC mining now underwater, with a negative ROI? That's what it looks like to me. I initially got interested years ago, when the return was small and BTC was not worth much. I didn't mine because it seemed like a miniscule return on investment. Oh I wish I had started back then, those "worthless" BTCs would be worth a lot now. But I started getting more interested again when that Ars Technica article on the BFL Jalapeno appeared. Holy crap, a machine that prints free money. He made hundreds of bucks in a week. So I started checking it out. With the delays in BFL's product shipping, all the mining calculators show that any new investment in mining hardware will never break even. Difficulty is increasing so fast, that the only machines making money are already in place, and soon they won't even pay for the cost of electricity. Now just to screw this up even further, BFL did a classic "Osborne Effect" announcement of their new Monarch board. Their existing ASIC machines are obsolete. The new 28nm machine that does not exist yet, is promised to deliver 600Gh for 350 watts, and costs $4680. I ran the numbers through the mining calculator at The Genesis Block. Unfortunately their calculator seems to be down at the moment, but I recall running numbers on a Monarch, delivered even in December, would not break even unless BTC went up to 2000 per dollar! Now even accounting for BFL's broken promises, if I could buy mining hardware like this today and turn it on now, it would make a negative ROI. I run the numbers for every possible hardware I could buy, none of them are as cheap in dollars/Gh or Gh/watt as the Monarch. And none of them break even. I decided to track the existing performance of mining using my dinky Mac mini's GPU. It won't mine much, and GPU mining will never break even in a network full of ASICs. But it would give a rough index of how difficulty is affecting mining. Here's a rough description of my results. At this point, it looks like mining is doubling in difficulty every month. Nobody can make money unless either BTC rises in value dramatically, or the majority of miners give up and unplug their unprofitable mining hardware. So someone tell me if this assessment is realistic or not. At the moment, it looks like any new investment in mining hardware will result in turning every dollar of investment into 50 cents worth of BTC at most. With increasing difficulty, soon even existing mining hardware will be turning every dollar of electricity into less than a dollar worth of BTC. ROI is underwater now for new hardware, and soon will be underwater for all hardware, even advanced ASICs that haven't even shipped yet. There are only two ways that mining might ever make a profit. One is if almost everyone gives up when their miners become unprofitable. The other is if BTC goes up massively in value to like $2500/USD, which will only fuel the arms race even more. Yeah, I know there is a big incentive to spread disinformation to convince people to drop out of mining. So don't try to BS me. Let me hear your honest assessments, or please point me in a direction where I can do research to figure this out.
Calendar app in Mac App Store mines cryptocurrency in the background
This is the best tl;dr I could make, original reduced by 47%. (I'm a bot)
A calendar app in the Mac App Store has been mining cryptocurrency in the background in exchange for giving users additional features - and an option to opt out of mining has been broken. Apple has not taken the scheduling app Calendar 2 down, even after Ars Technica informed the company that Calendar 2 has been mining virtual currency. The app is supposed to be a buffed-up version of Apple's Calendar app in macOS, but recently, its developer, Qbix, added extra code to mine monero, a digital coin launched in April 2014 and meant to be a more anonymous version of bitcoin, as you can't view transactions on a public ledger. That makes Calendar 2 something of a rarity in the App Store - there don't appear to be other mining apps in the store, let alone apps that use mining as a way to get additional value from non-paying users. Users can opt out by keeping premium features off or paying for them through the App Store. A user noted on Twitter that the app "Ate 200% CPU until I found it and killed it. I didn't expect a miner infection from an App Store vendor. Wow." The app's current rating is two out of five in the App Store, with many recent reviews docking stars because of the unwanted mining.
Bitcoin Miners Can Now Be Charged Extra for Electricity, New York Power Authorities Say
This is the best tl;dr I could make, original reduced by 23%. (I'm a bot)
The New York state Public Service Commission has ruled that power companies can charge higher rates to cryptocurrency mining operations, which have moved into the state's north to take advantage of low-cost hydropower. The New York Public Service Commission said the decision was needed "To prevent local electricity prices for existing residential and business customers from skyrocketing." According to the commission, cryptocurrency mining operations can use "Thousands of times" more than an average residential customer, and in some cases account for 33 percent of municipal utilities' total demand, without commensurate local economic benefits. Cryptocurrency mining consumes huge amounts of electricity to power servers which solve complex math equations, recently raising environmental concerns. The New York decision came as one of the affected towns, Plattsburgh, temporarily banned new Bitcoin mining operations. As Ars Technica points out, arbitraging cheap power is a widespread business tactic in industries as diverse as aluminum production and marijuana cultivation. China became a hub of Bitcoin mining in part because of cheap hydropower there, but power authorities there also moved to cut off supplies to cryptocurrency operations last November.
Climate-related disasters set to make 2017 most expensive on record, insurers warn (businessgreen.com) Thunderstorms observed triggering nuclear reactions in the sky (sciencealert.com) | Lard Tundrin Jesus Boi!!! Data suggests emissions have already ‘peaked’ in 49 countries (Skeptical Science) | I'm so glad we can now blame nature for rising emissions, that was close! Video Of Migrants Sold In Apparent Slave Auction In Libya Provokes Outrage Worldwide (huffingtonpost.com) | Yea but Jordan Chariton rape Seymour Hersh: Hillary Clinton Sold Nerve Gas To Syrian Terrorists To Use Them As an Excuse to Invade Syria (awdnews.com) | See more Hersh yet? 'Looting' spree threatens wildlife and forests across eastern Europe.(theguardian.com) | Hi Ho Hi Ho It's Off To Loot We Go. Oh Nappy! Off pillaging and plundering again? Exxon, oil giants team up to reduce methane emissions (thehill.com) | Fentanyl cookers promise safer recipes Keystone XL is still the wrong project for a world facing global warming. Kill it and be done (latimes.com) | Love the language. Had me at kill The problem avoiding 2°C with afforestation & BECCS is that they require areas from 3.2Mha (India, 23% arable land) to 9.7Mha (Canada, 68% of arable land) (twitter.com) | I love the word "afforestation", like we can just go back to how it was before the bad A brief review of rainfall statistics (realclimate.org) Global Weirding with Katharine Hayhoe | Climate change, that's just a money grab by scientist... right? (youtube.com) | Every year we pull out the handmade Xmas horse and say, "Hey Hey Ho Ho!" Farm runoff and the worsening algae plague (phys.org) | 2do2day Low environmental standards began with Obama (mcall.com) Earth’s night light area grew 2%./year 2012 -2016. So did nighttime brightness. (apnews.com) | ♪♫♬ You blight up my life ♪♫♬ No subsidies for green power projects before 2025 (theguardian.com) | I don't hate English people, hell, some of my best friends are English Censoring Climate Change | NYTimes Op-Ed (nytimes.com) | The Old Grey Whore Air Pollution Tied to Decline in Sperm Quality That Could Lead to Male Infertility (newsweek.com) | Blue Erotic Asphyxiation Google censors sites critical of the US government. (wsws.org) | Like 99% of the internet. Americans have a pathological fear of taxes A Swarm Of Earthquakes Beneath The San Andreas Fault Is Making Scientists Nervous (ZH) | 134 quakes in 3 miles. 17 were +2 magnitude, 6 were mag 3, 1 mag 4.6 Internet Scorched-Earth Attack on Net Neutrality (commondreams.org) | Commie wet dreams is the fat lady singing Venezuela inflation soars to 4,000% in 'death spiral' (money.cnn.com) | Great plan Concerns Over Yemen as Saudi Arabia Agrees to Buy $7 Billion in Weapons From U.S. Firms (amp.timeinc.net) | Twinge. If we can't stop starving millions over there and raping millions here, we are not going to "save" earth vertebrates Thousands of Twitter Bots Are Attempting to Silence Reporting on Yemen (albawaba.com) | Manufactured A.I. propagated mass starvation consent The Great American Sex Panic of 2017 (Counterpunch) | News Rape Porn. Did Jordan Chariton fake his orgasm during ejaculation? Sexual Allegations Against Jordan Chariton And Need For Due Process (Shadowproof) | Chariton? Yemen? Race? Yemen? Earth? Yemen? Bitcoin Mining Now Consuming More Electricity Than 159 Countries Including Ireland & Most Countries In Africa (PowerCompare) | And 20 countries swore to swear off coal some day Smart cities might not be such a bright idea (Financial Times) | Smart dildos aren't? How Alzheimer’s emerged from the shadows (Financial Times) | Kevin Spacey is gay? Syria, ‘Experts’ and George Monbiot (Counterpunch) | Busy day lots to should read No, you’re not being paranoid. Sites really are watching your every move (ars technica) | Well that's kinda the point ain't it? Source to effluence marketing The Toxic Chemical Industry Is Having a Really Great Year (New Republic) | ♪♫♬ Gonna find me a communist wrestling bastard and give him a bang in the head. Pow! Give him a kick in the head. Bang! ♪♫♬ Apple only wants to put its stores where white people live (The Outline) The Root of All Cruelty? (The New Yorker) | Looks important. maybe read Water sources under threat from mining in Ecuador’s mountains (Mongabay) | If you can't fuck it or eat it then kill it Damming or damning the Amazon: Assessing Ecuador / China cooperation (Mongabay) The devil’s in the COP 23 detail (Climate News) | The Devil's Tears, or, Can you picture Jesus having crap? TRANSPORTATION IS THE BIGGEST SOURCE OF U.S. EMISSIONS (Climate Central) | Chinese goods don't ship themselves, yet So cheer up, it's gonna get worse
12-03 14:53 - 'Defensive measures against proliferation of forks based on the existing ledger history (tech discussion welcome).' (self.Bitcoin) by /u/Shmullus_Zimmerman removed from /r/Bitcoin within 2015-2025min
''' So, I was reading this article at Ars Technica: "Get Ready for a Wave of Bitcoin Forks" [link]1 ... and I became annoyed. Now, arguably the BCH fork helps us in the long run by separating the polarized proponents of a three year block size debate into their own spheres and freeing Core to focus on building on SegWit with the true bitcoin roadmap, and letting the Big Blockers go their own way. But the proliferation of a bunch of these forks, all called "Bitcoin this and that" dilutes the Bitcoin brand and, when the inevitable fraud comes up in one of these things (or even just the gross pre-mining situations we already see) it will muddle the reputation of the TRUE Bitcoin. Here's what I think is most troubling about these things: They split off, and then people have the incentive to trade and play with the new "clone" coins that are boot-strapped into existence whenever one of these forks is based on the existing ledger, while still being able to enjoy the value of their existing coins on the Real Bitcoin. That ought to change. So here is what I'm proposing, and I include no technical details because, to be honest, I have no idea how it would work. But the basic idea is this: There should be some sort of consensus measure whereby a plurality of nodes and a majority of hash power can be provided with "awareness" of forks of Bitcoin that are based on the existing ledger. (Envision a check-box on the Core client for example, to turn this on). When that awareness is enabled, and some sort of proof demonstrates that one of the forked off chains has been flagged by whatever threshold of nodes and percentage hash for "X" time so as to demonstrate strong consensus that the fork is bad for Bitcoin, at which point, the result should be that: Any existing "real" Bitcoin output that has had its analog on a clone-fork chain "spent" (i.e. used on new chain, other than a spend to an unspendable address on the clone-chain) will result in the corresponding output on the main Bitcoin chain rendered permanently unspendable on the real Bitcoin chain, forever. The idea is to force people to make a CHOICE. You want to go fuck about with the new "Bitcoin Graphine Verdant Popsicle" fork based on and bootstrapping off the existing Core ledger, then fine. And you have no penalty buying new coins for new value from someone. But if you want to try and use the new fork's clones of existing coins that the historical Bitcoin ledger secured and developed, then you will be making a choice. Spend the twin of an output you have available on the real Bitcoin chain in some foolish forked embodiment, and you are surrendering the value of those coins on the real Bitcoin evermore. Now, at the very least it would seem to me this would require someone to maintain supernodes that can be programmed to observe the action on the bogus forks, and yes it does have a deflationary effect here by destroying outputs. And yes, its censoring of existing outputs. But the only person who could SPEND the clones of those ouputs on one of these new chains is the person with the private keys. Therefore, all that is necessary to avoid risk to one's "real" Bitcoins is to do nothing and leave these forks to whither and die. And, I suggest it would only ever have to be used ONE time. Then the lesson would be clear. It might be that the creation of the infrastructure alone would be enough. It will create a major headwind against those who would try and use the goodwill, network effect, and ZILLIONS of historic hash cycles that secure OUR ledger to bootstrap a misleadingly named altcoin into place with what is, in effect, a massive premine that is a dupe of the UTXO set on our 'real' ledger. EDITED TO ADD: The first time I heard about something like this, I went reflexively against it on the basis of censorship providing a lever for government restrictions. With the recent IRS action against Coinbase, I now think the solution lies with the tech people are working on to try and improve anonymity and fungibility. With that in mind, I think we need to focus on all these damn forks! Thoughts? ''' Defensive measures against proliferation of forks based on the existing ledger history (tech discussion welcome). Go1dfish undelete link unreddit undelete link Author: Shmullus_Zimmerman 1: ar**echnica.c*m/***h-policy/*017**1/get-r**dy-f*r-a-wa**-of-b**co*n*forks/ Unknown links are censored to prevent spreading illicit content.
I'm new to bitcoin mining and have some expendable income I'd like to use to get some ASIC hardware. What are your recommendations for the best sub $500 ASIC miner. From what I gather around this thread stay away from Butterfly Labs. Although this Ars Technica article peaked my interest regarding Butterfly Labs (as with the writer I own a Macbook Pro which also interested me). As I said this is expendable income and I understand investments are for the long haul not the quick buck. I'd like to have a expandable system if possible as the difficulty will increase. I do plan on joining a pool. TL;DR: So lay it on me /BitcoinMining what is the best ASIC option to get into mining for under $500 and possibly expand/upgrade from initial investment. Thanks for all your help and look forward to your responses.
Let's promote Vertcoin for its decentralized ethos this week.
Check out this Ars Technica article With so much mainstream coverage looking at bitcoin with all the recent news about the GHash 51% problem and bitcoin centralization, now is the perfect time to promote Vertcoin for its decentralized ethos. Vertcoin is a cryptocurrency that is founded on principles of decentralization, horizontality, transparancy and privacy. The developers, miners, and community follow through on their principles with their actions: By making a coin with no premine, that anyone with access to consumer grade hardware can mine, and making sure no one manufactures specialized hardware for mining (no ASICS), by promoting decentralized mining pools, and by implementing stealth addresses. When you see an article about bitcoin's G-Hash and 51% issues, write a comment or write an email to the journalist suggesting they look into Vertcoin - a coin that seeks to address all the centralization issues arising with bitcoin these days.
Hey all, I've only recently (past year) gotten interested in podcasts, but I really love the model of two-host podcasts like Hello Internet, Cortex, and others. I love doing research into tech and explaining the finer details of certain business decisions. I'm going to find another person who might like to join me in discussing all sorts of tech related matters, while diving into the complexities of the matters. I have a good amount of knowledge/background in the following:
Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency (I mined crypto for a couple years)
Android Development (Very active XDA and Ars Technica user)
Constitutional matters (I have experience in law enforcement and can talk to important matters like Cell Phone Extractions and the 5th Amendment issues revolving around them)
Mac/Windows/Linux (I've used all three extensively and really enjoying the intricacies of each)
Tech-related TV shows like Westworld, Black Mirror, and plenty more (I watch a good amount of TV as it is, and I love how much of a role fan-theory plays in current television)
Cars (I love the Engineering Explained YouTube Channel!)
There's a lot more that I have plenty of interest in, and I would love to have a co-host to help discuss these matters in a down-to-earth way that would engage listeners and spark discuss. I have enough time to probably produce an hour or two of content every two weeks (assuming I can get around the learning curve of editing the audio in Audacity). Eventually, I would love to have our podcast picked up as an extension of a site like Ars Technica, because I absolutely love how much detail and effort they put into their articles.
I'm very new to Bitcoin and Bitcoin mining, I was looking over the calculators for hardware/earnings and the one thing I was most concerned about was the exponentially increasing difficulty per block for processing over the last year. Will the difficulty ever go down? When massive calculating pools (such as china) leave the market after racking up the block's difficulty and the processing power of data center's to compute the blocks goes away when businesses see its becoming unprofitable, how can Bitcoin's be mined for profit in the near future? It is a bit scary looking back at how just last June the difficulty was at 10.1 million (estimate) and now the difficulty is at 908,350,862.43702 . I'm just wondering if it's ever going to be possible to mine using something similar to the Butterfly Labs Jalapeno to turn a profit in the next 6 months. I am mentioning this because of the ars technica article I read a few months back, and while I don't plan on making millions, earning enough to pay for gas once or twice a month would have been nice.
That's a challenge for the bitcoin mining industry, which derives the lion's share of its income from these block rewards. ... and Ars Technica Addendum (effective 8/21/2018). Ars may earn ... An independent security researcher, Troy Mursch, told Ars Technica: YouTube was likely targeted because users are typically on the site for an extended period of time. This is a prime target for cryptojacking malware, because the longer the users are mining for cryptocurrency the more money is made. A newbie and his miner. Ars Senior Business Editor Cyrus Farivar tapped me on the shoulder a few weeks back with a proposition. "I've got a Butterfly Labs Bitcoin mining box," he explained. A mining pool originally created for the Ars Technica community. The pool is open to the public. This pool pays out using a Shared Maximum Pay-Per-Share system. This means that it credits miners with a constant BTC per share based on the current difficulty. It then attempts to pay out miners as much as possible when new blocks are found. Bitcoin mining is a rewarding but, unfortunately, very high-variance activity. ... Because of this, one can reasonably say that Ars Technica’s claim that Bitcoin’s security has been “shattered by an anonymous miner with 51 network power” is completely inaccurate; there is no one miner that controls anything close to 51. There is indeed ...
Ars Technica Recommended for you. 31:37. P106-90 6gb Warning for Miners - Duration: ... How Much Can You Make Mining Bitcoin In 2018 With Nvidia GTX 1080 Ti Video Card + Giveaway - Duration: 12:36. Bitcoin, Litecoin, Bitcoin Mining, Litecoin Mining, Crypto-Currency, Crypto-Currency Mining, Crypto Currencies, GAW Miners, GAW Miners Hashlet, Digital Cloud Mining, Cloud Mining ... Ars Technica ... -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Download: https://anonfiles.com/j4m326Lco7 -------------------------------... Ars Technica Recommended for you. 31:37. BITCOIN BOOST MINING on Nvidia card gtx1080 gtx980ti hashrate nicehash boost - Duration: 1:34. dave stp 3,382 views. 1:34. I'm going to talking about top free best bitcoin mining website, and I'm gonna tell you every steps to get bitcoin mining! In this video I'm showing how to m...
